


Always Home

by hibye



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, POV Alternating, Road Trips, Spock in a Hawaiian shirt, just kirk and spock when they are older and settled and married and digging each other, old married spirk, overly sentimental writing because i wanted to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 11:23:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16304231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hibye/pseuds/hibye
Summary: Spock and Kirk have been married a while now, but have never properly gone to visit Kirk's home - so it's time for a happy little vacation.





	Always Home

**Always Home**

At the rest stop, Jim buys an enormous soda and a bag of sweets. He says it is all right to indulge once and a while. He wears a pair of comically large sunglasses on his face, tags still dangling from the leg, and a floppy sunhat that he claims is for his mother. His hair, growing curly in middle age, peeks out from beneath the brim.

Spock allows Jim to insistently feed him one, single, sour candy.

The shuttle ride takes hours, well into the night, but Jim insists on driving. He taps a beat on the steering wheel in time with the radio. When he sings, it is as bad as it has always been. He knows it and laughs at himself. They are headed for home – Jim’s home, outside of the Enterprise, outside of Spock.

“One day, we should take another road trip,” Jim says. “All around the world.”

Spock thinks about this moment, crammed together in a shuttle with the stale, greasy smell of “road food” and the crackling sound of local radio, Jim’s nonstop chatter, the lazy heat of the sun through the windows, and can’t think of anything he would rather do than this.

When he doesn’t say anything, Jim nudges him gently and asks him for his thoughts.

“I would be amenable to such a venture,” he says, and, as expected, that makes Jim smile.

\--

When they arrive at night, Jim’s mother is waiting up for them. She runs out the door as they pull up, tackling Jim in a hug that is a bit too aggressive for both of their ages, but he hugs back just as fiercely. He can feel the dampness of her tears against his neck.

“It’s good to see you, Ma,” he whispers.

Spock gives them a moment before stepping out of the shuttle. He is wearing one of the only sets of casual clothes he owns, a culturally appropriate robe of some sort in shades of green, and in the dark, bathed by the car’s headlights, he looks particularly alien. Alien, and hefting their shared suitcase, an ancient number covered in a pattern of pink flamingos.

Following Jim’s gaze, Winona spots him; Spock freezes at the sight of her grin. She turns to enfold him in a hug as well, and though he does an excellent job of maintaining Vulcan calm, Jim can see his eyes go wide with panic. His mother tells Spock something that Jim cannot hear. After a beat, Spock gives her a solemn nod and, to Jim’s delight, a pat on the arm – the closest to a hug that she is likely to get.

“Are you boys hungry?” Winona asks.

“No, thank you,” says Spock.

“I ate on the road,” says Jim, evasively.

“Chips and sugar,” Spock elaborates, and Jim mutters, “Traitor.”

Winona laughs. “I kept some soup in the crock pot for you. Please have some before you get to bed.”

Outnumbered, Jim does as he’s told. Even Spock is tired from the long trip, and so when Jim lies down to sleep, it’s only a moment before Spock follows, all long, warm limbs and the faint sweat-and-rubber smell of travel. He presses an absent-minded kiss to Jim’s shoulder.

“What did my mom say to you?” Jim asks, voice already slurred with sleep.

Spock huffs a soundless breath of laughter. “Are you referring to her hug outside by the shuttle?”

“Yes.”

“She said, ‘Thank you, and welcome home.’”

\--

In the morning, Spock agrees to a shower, always preferring to begin a new day clean. It is a traditional type, pouring hot water from groaning taps, and it is no surprise that Jim sings here, too. Spock is content to listen, until one of Jim’s wet hands flaps at him from behind the curtain. “Get in here, you.”

Spock has rarely been able to deny Jim anything, and so he joins him in the narrow spray. The water must be hot for Jim, whose skin is flushed with it, but it’s almost cool to Spock’s touch. He patiently allows Jim to wash him, to play impishly with his chest hair and ears. The space is narrow, leaving Spock with impressions of slippery skin and cold tile walls, the metallic taste of water, the fragrant citrus punch of soap.

“I could hear the birds outside this morning,” says Jim, voice almost lost in the thundering of water. “I didn’t realize how much I missed that.”

“It would be simple to install simulated birdsong before the alarm in your quarters,” Spock suggests.

He can tell that he’s missed the point from the gentle look on Jim’s face, but Jim only says, “Thank you, Spock, but that’s all right.”

Once dry, Jim puts Spock in one of his old shirts, a riot of bright floral against a red background. He is grinning to himself, and Spock can feel the general shape of it – humor, affection, and an almost teenage glee in seeing his partner wear his clothes. They are nearly the same size now, Spock’s height filling in for Jim’s expanding middle.

“Looking handsome,” Jim teases.

His hair is dark and curled, still damp, and he wears a T-shirt that says “Corn Parade Security” that is, according to the date stamped on it, more than two decades old. There are happy wrinkles bunched around his eyes.

Spock can’t work out how to phrase the emotion welling in him, so he just nods at the compliment. On the far wall, Jim has opened a window to let in the fresh air and sunlight. Through it, Spock can hear the hum of insects, and the intermittent call of birdsong.

“Have you ever baked chocolate chip cookies, Mister Spock?” asks Jim, as though the answer isn’t obvious.

“I have not, Jim,” Spock replies.

“Well, then,” says Jim, and reaches for his hand. “Better late than never.”

\--

Though healthy and still rather young, Winona as at the age where she enjoys a frequent nap. When she is awake, she listens to Jim regale her with stories of his exploits and adventures, which she and Spock both pretend aren’t exaggerated for effect. In return, she shares updates of local events, updates on friends and family that Jim hasn’t seen in years but still loves with all his heart. On occasion, when Jim starts to feel a little too choked, Spock will excuse himself and come back two glasses of tea, or water, or lemonade.

“Spock, you always know just what we need,” says Winona.

Spock answers flatly, “Vulcans are telepathic.”

She knew that, of course. Covering her smile with the rim of her cup, she looks Jim in the eye. They have met before, twice in person, but she is still learning how to speak Spock.

When she is asleep again, and the two of them are out on the bench in front of the house, watching the last of the sunset’s colors fade on the horizon, Spock says, “She has the same habit of laughing at me that you do.”

“We aren’t laughing at you,” says Jim. He wonders if he should be concerned, but Spock shows no offense. “We are enjoying you.”

“I fail to see the distinction.”

Jim thinks on it. “Laughing at you… implies disdain.”

This makes Spock think, now. “I see,” he says at last.

Jim looks over at him, in his obnoxiously bright Hawaiian shirt, hair slightly fluffed from the foreign soap, and his heart aches with love, and he laughs.

“You are doing it now,” says Spock.

“I am. I am often enjoying you.”

Spock shifts to settle his elbows across his knees, comfortable in the early autumn heat. Now and then, Jim will catch him basking in the naked sunlight, eyes closed, and Jim will wonder if it reminds him of home.

“No,” says Spock, so quietly that he may be thinking it. “I am reminded of home when I am reminded of you.”

In the back of his mind, Jim recalls a sentiment, one shared as a whisper with him in a frozen, empty cave, that in every universe, in every place, they belong at each other’s sides. Even in time and places where home, as they know it, does not exist.

Between them is a plate of chocolate chip cookies, and a small tumbler of milk, half-empty. Jim licks some crumbs from his fingertips. He is barefoot, scrunching grass beneath his toes.

“I could sit like this forever, with you,” he says.

“You could not,” says Spock. The corners of his mouth are pulled into the faintest smile. “You would miss space far too much.”

He’s right, but they both knew that. “Quit contradicting me,” says Jim brightly.

It is dark before Winona stirs again and pads out onto the front porch. Jim can feel her watching them for a long while before she comes to stand beside them, laying a hand on both of their shoulders, and this time Spock only tenses a little before he relaxes again.

\--

That night, Jim pulls Spock down to him with his trademark barrage of soft kisses, one hand already twining around Spock’s hand, the other combing through his hair. When he was younger, when they were both angrier and more afraid, his touch had been blunt and almost painful, but in recent years he has softened like butter.

“Your mother,” says Spock, and Jim cuts him off with a laugh, asks him not to mention her here, like this.

“Just try to be quiet, sweetheart,” he says, a nickname he only uses when they are together in bed and which never fails to send warmth straight up Spock’s spine.

Spock does not need to point out that he is not the one who has trouble staying quiet; that is part of the joke, he thinks. He can tell that Jim is comparing this, fondly, to the indiscretions of his youth – girls climbing out of windows to escape unseen. Spock won’t be going anywhere.

He is squishy, ticklish, where Spock’s grip lands at his waist, and he drags him close to press their foreheads together, share breath, share everything. Spock tastes chocolate on his lips.

When they had agreed to get married, a while ago now, there had been a lot of discussion about whether to wear rings. Spock’s sensitivity to his hands was a concern. He wears his on a chain around his neck, beneath his shirt, but loves to feel the ring of cool metal when he brushes his fingers up Jim’s palm.

Spock had never had a partner who laughed during sex, before Jim. It had been a similar discussion – “I’m having fun, Mister Spock. That is, after all, the purpose of the whole thing.” He often only calls him Mister when he is having fun.

The old-fashioned bed moves beneath them, unusually soft, clatters once before Jim, snickering, rolls them into a different position. The lights are still on, and Spock can see the start of a sunburn across Jim’s cheeks. When they visit New Vulcan, and they will, he will need to make sure Jim has the proper protection.

“Stop that,” says Jim. “Be here with me.”

Here, Spock thinks, focusing in. He would not want to be anywhere else.

In the morning, curled close together, Spock listens to Jim’s quiet snoring and, over that, outside the open window, the singing of birds.

\-- the end

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Thoughts always appreciated! :)


End file.
